


Observation Skills

by nanuk_dain



Series: Drift Compatible [11]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: M/M, Team Hot Dads, Unusual Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-26
Updated: 2014-11-26
Packaged: 2018-02-27 03:19:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2677076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nanuk_dain/pseuds/nanuk_dain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mako is fourteen when she finds that picture of Sensei and Ranger Hansen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Observation Skills

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bachaboska](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bachaboska/gifts).



> 1) Did I mention that I love Mako? I think she's incredibly strong and badass, just in a very subtle way. She deserves more attention, so this is her point of view on Stacker/Herc and Chuck. I hope you enjoy it! 
> 
> 2) For Bachaboska. You aksed for Mako finding a picture of Stacker and Herc - here's what I made of it. I really hope it satisfies your craving, my dear! (Maybe I'll turn it into a manip later on...?)

_Anchorage Shatterdome, Alaska, March 2017_

 

Mako enters Sensei's study and goes to the shelf in the back, just as he had told her to. There are many books about engineering, physics, biology and Jaeger tech, and several boxes of different sizes. She looks for the big black one named 'Jaeger Blue Prints' that Sensei has told her to get. Somewhere in there will be the old, rejected Mark I blueprint that she's looking for for her engineering class. Sensei said that it's okay for her to use it as long as she just takes it for reference and doesn't copy it. Well, she would never do that. There's no fun in copying things if she can just as well think them up on her own. 

Once she finally spies the box, she sighs heavily. It's on the top shelf - of course it is - far beyond her reach. She looks around, scanning the study for something to climb on. Of course Sensei doesn't keep a stepladder around, he's so tall that he doesn't need one even for the highest shelves. Mako's gaze falls on a simple chair - she really doesn't want to use the swivelly desk chair, that seems a bit dangerous - and she carries it over to the shelf. It might not be enough, but she can't see anything else she could use. She steps on the seat and stands on her tiptoes. She puts her hand against a small box at the height of her shoulder to stretch just the little bit more to reach the blue print box. Just when she grabs hold of it, the small box shifts under her hand and falls down to the floor before Mako can do anything to prevent it. It spills its contents all over the concrete, little pieces of paper and something that sound metallic. 

Mako just watches in horror. She didn't mean to do that! She slowly gets down from the chair, careful not to let the big blueprint box fall as well. She's in enough trouble as it is. Sensei is a very private man, he certainly doesn't like it when others go through his things. Mako quickly kneels down to gather the pieces of paper that lie all over the floor. They're picture. She knows some of them, Sensei showed them to her sometime after he took her in. There are medals as well, and some other small trinkets. Mako carefully puts them back in the small plastic container, still unsettled about the fact that she made it fall on the floor. 

It's Sensei's box of memories. Her mother used to have one, and sometimes she would show Mako the treasures she kept inside. Pictures, letters, little things. Mako loved it. She loved the stories her mother told her when she showed her the pieces, one story for each piece. That's why it's called a box of memories, her mother had explained, because those things may be worthless to others, but to you they're precious because they hold memories. Moments that only you and your loved ones know because you experienced them together. 

Mako takes care with every single piece she finds on the floor, even bends down to look underneath the shelf. There she can see another piece of paper, right at very back against the wall, and she reaches out with her hand to get it out. She turns it around once she holds it in her hand. It's a printed picture, old by the looks of it, the paper wrinkled and the print yellowing, some edges torn. But it's not the condition of the photo that catches her attention. It's the two smiling men it shows, Sensei and Ranger Hansen.

It's probably the only photo there is where Sensei isn't fully and impeccably dressed. Simply because they're at the beach, both of them wearing just boardshorts, their hair wet. Sensei's arm is wrapped around Ranger Hansen's shoulder and she can make out Ranger Hansen's hand on Sensei's waist. The white of Ranger Hansen's skin is a sharp contrast to the dark ebony of Sensei's, but what really picks her attention are the tattoos she can see on their bare chests. One high on Sensei's left chest, and a matching one on Ranger Hansen's right. They spell out each other's names, the short nicknames she has heard them use, in a clear but beautiful Gothic font.

Mako stares. She never knew Sensei has a tattoo. Never mind that it says 'Herc'.

It's their expressions that get to her the most, though. Sensei is full out laughing, and so is Ranger Hansen. She has never seen Sensei look like that, in the entire time she's known him. It's relaxed and carefree and full of joy. 

He's happy.

Mako can't help smiling back. She likes this picture a lot. 

She knows that only Tamsin-san could have taken that picture. There is nobody else - apart from Ranger Hansen, obviously - that Sensei is comfortable enough with to let his guard down like that. To smile like that.

Mako has an inkling when this picture was taken. There is only one occasion that she knows of that Sensei, Tamsin-san and Ranger Hansen were on a holiday together, and she only knows of it because Tamsin-san told her about it. Told her how great a time it had been, no matter the unpleasant conditions that brought it on. It had been right after her and Sensei had been diagnosed with cancer, and Tamsin-san had told Mako that it was Ranger Hansen who had dragged both of them to Australia the next day, no protest had dissuaded him. She remembered that he had just shown up in the morning, and he had organised her and Sensei's leave without them even knowing about it. They spent the next month travelling around Australia. The memories had made Tamsin-san smile fondly.

Mako looks at the picture again, at the way Sensei and Ranger Hansen are obviously comfortable around each other. Familiar. It feels good to know that there's somebody else who will take care of Sensei, Mako thinks, because he doesn't do it enough himself. She hesitates a moment, then she takes out her tablet and takes a picture of the photo. She feels slightly bad for it, as if she's stealing a memory, but she just can't put it back without keeping a copy of it. There is something magical about the simple joy captured in the picture, and she wants to keep it as a reminder.

When she turns the picture around to put it back in the box, she catches sight of Tamsin-san's familiar handwriting on the back. It says 'Our Epic Road Trip through Australia, June 2016', and there's a car sketched in black pen, a SUV of some kind with an overly high roof and three stick figures standing next to it. It's obvious that they're Sensei, Ranger Hansen and Tamsin-san, even with the few strokes used to depict them. Mako chuckles, she knows Tamsin-san drew this. She did a few sketches of the same style for Mako when they visited her in the hospital. 

Mako carefully returns the picture to Sensei's box of memories and puts the lid on it. Then she quickly sorts through the blue prints in the big black box and takes out the Mark I designs she came for before she returns both boxes to their respective spots on the shelf and leaves Sensei's study. Her tablet feels heavier in her hand than she knows it is. 

Over the next few days, Mako observes and learns. She's good at that, always has been. It's a skill she developed in her father's smithy in Tanegashima, where she received most of her lessons by watching silently. 

Now she watches Sensei and Ranger Hansen. And she learns more than she expected. First she notices how in sync they are - as if they always know what the other is thinking, doing, planning. They move together, they even seem to breath in the same rhythm. She wonders if they ever piloted together, drifted together. It would certainly explain their synchronicity - Mako observed the same thing to a lower degree in Sensei's and Tamsin-san's interaction.

The next thing she picks up on is the way Sensei and Ranger Hansen communicate with gazes, much more than they do with words, especially when there are people around. They look at each other a lot, nothing obvious, just quick glances that seem to say everything they want the other to know. It's rather fascinating, and Mako can't help wishing that maybe some day she will find somebody she'll have that kind of connection with. 

Sensei and Ranger Hansen rarely touch, but they _do_ touch. It's inconspicuous little touches and Mako is sure nobody else notices them. But she does, because she's looking for it. There's the quick hand on the small of the back, the fingers grazing when they walk past each other and the way they always seem to stand just a fraction closer than appropriate. Of course Mako knows that Sensei and Ranger Hansen are close friends - he's the closest friend Sensei has, as far as she can tell. Ranger Hansen - he asked her several times to call him Herc, but she just can't - is often in their quarters with his son Chuck-kun, and sometimes Sensei and her go theirs. She is used to doing her homework in either quarters and so is Chuck-kun. Mako finds Chuck-kun difficult to deal with, he's so explosive. But he's intelligent and working with him on engineering problems is actually fun. 

Mako has to admit that she never thought that Sensei and Ranger Hansen might be a couple. Now she wonders how she could have overlooked the signs. They're so familiar and at ease with each other, especially once the work day is over and they're in the privacy of their quarters. Sensei relaxes around Ranger Hansen in a way he never does with anybody else. Really, the photo and the tattoos were just a push in the right direction, but ultimately she shouldn't have needed it. Sensei and Ranger Hansen don't try to hide their relationship, she notices now that she pays attention, they just don't advertise it either and both men aren't the type for public displays of affection. Their relationship seems so obvious to her now that she is slightly irritated that she missed it before. Maybe her observation skills aren't quite as good as she thought they are and need some more honing. She will make sure to take care of that.

That evening Mako takes out her tablet when she's in her room, wearing her pyjamas and ready to go to bed. She switches off the light and slips under the covers before she browses to the picture she took of the photo of Sensei and Ranger Hansen. It still makes her want to smile back. 

She likes this side of Sensei a lot, the laughing and relaxed man that he never seems to be here in the Shatterdome. She wants him to be happy like he was in that picture, and she is sure that Ranger Hansen plays a very important part in it. Mako likes Ranger Hansen, he's always nice to her and takes her seriously when she asks him something about piloting. She likes how he gently ruffles her hair when she says goodnight and he's still in the living room of their quarters. It's something he did since the very beginning when she came to live with Sensei, and it always made her feel at home. Her dad used to do the same thing when she was younger.

Mako stares at the picture and thinks about what her newfound knowledge means for her life. Since Ranger Hansen is Sensei's partner, it makes him family. And Chuck-kun too. Maybe she should try to connect with both of them a little more, they're her new family, after all. When she lost mother and father and found herself in the overcrowded Tokyo orphanage, Mako's world had collapsed. She had never expected to have a family again, especially after her relatives had refused to take her in because she was a girl and not a boy. It had been the darkest time of her life, and she still remembers the scratchy feeling of the blanket on her face when she had cried herself to sleep at night, trying to be quiet so that she wouldn't disturb the other children in the room. She had heard their muffled sniffing, too.

The day Sensei had come to ask her if she wanted to live with him had seemed like a dream. She remembered him from that horrible day, she remembered his face, his warm smile and his hand on her shoulder when he'd comforted her before the medics took her away to the hospital. When he came to the orphanage, he offered her a home, a new life, and now he even gives her a new family. She has lived with him for not even a year, but Mako knows she is very lucky to have him. She looks at the picture and gives into the urge to smile back before she switches the tablet off and lies down to go to sleep. 

For years afterwards the picture gets transferred to every tablet she owns, along with a picture of Sensei and her in the Lima Shatterdome, one of Tamsin-san and her on the beach in Hawaii, one of Chuck-kun and her next to Gipsy Danger's huge foot and a slightly blurry photo Ranger Hansen sent her from the Sydney Shatterdome with him and Chuck-kun in front of his Jaeger Lucky Seven. There's one photo she likes the most, though. It shows Sensei, Ranger Hansen, Chuck-kun and her in their quarters, and there's a lavishly decorated Christmas tree that tilts slightly to the left. They're all smiling, but Chuck-kun's smile is the biggest, and he's carefully holding a rumpled bulldog puppy in his arms. She considers this her family picture.

When she's older, Mako makes print-outs of all photos and keeps them in a little wooden box that Ranger Hansen gave her on her first Christmas with her new family. It's the beginning of her own box of memories.


End file.
